Howdy, I’m Martin Ralya. By day, I’m a marketing writer for a Fortune 100 company; by night, I’m a small-press publisher, award-winning author, and GMing blogger.

I live in Utah with my amazing wife, Alysia, our beautiful daughter, Lark, and our neurotic beagle, Charlie, in a house full of books, movies, and games.

MartinRalya.com is my online hub — an easy way to check out my published work, get in touch, and see what I’m up to.

Publishing

In 2009, I started a small-press publishing company, Engine Publishing. We’ve sold over 2,400 copies of our books since June 2010. Both books are bestsellers on the RPG industry’s largest PDF retail site, DriveThruRPG: Eureka is in the top 1%, and Masks is in the top 2.5%.

Our first book, Eureka: 501 Adventure Plots to Inspire Game Masters, came out in 2010; our second, Masks: 1,000 Memorable NPCs for Any Roleplaying Game, was released in 2011. Both books were written and designed by the authors of Gnome Stew and are currently available in print and PDF from our online store, as well as in many other places.

Engine Publishing products are distributed to retail game stores by Studio 2 Publishing.

Freelance Writing

I’ve been a freelance writer for the RPG industry since 2004, with 27 published credits and roughly 138,000 words in print. I’m experienced at writing both rules material and descriptive text, as well as editing, design, and development, and I’ve worked in a variety of genres and to a wide range of specifications. I have never missed a deadline.

My freelance work has included a section of the GMing chapter in Twilight: 2013, player-oriented material for Dragon Magazine, a setting chapter for Goodman Games’ DragonMech line, system-neutral material for Tabletop Adventures, game mechanics for E.N. Publishing, adventure seeds for Expeditious Retreat Press, and more.

I’ve also worked for Maslow Six Entertainment since 2008 as a founding member of their Council of Creators, and have written a large amount of material on a range of topics in that capacity. (None of it is public yet, so I can’t provide additional details.)

Blogging

I started gaming in 1987, and I’m passionate about game mastering (GMing). I’ve been writing GMing articles online since 2005, and have written close to 1,000 to date. Together, my two for-profit blogs represent an informal portfolio of my work.

I run and contribute to Gnome Stew, the most widely read game mastering blog on the planet (with over 1,000 daily visitors and 3,800 RSS readers). Along with a team of other authors and veteran GMs, I publish new GMing articles on the Stew every month; together, we’ve posted over 1,000 articles since May 2008. (See all of my articles.)

From 2005 to 2007, I ran and authored Treasure Tables, my first GMing blog. Although I no longer update TT, over 750 GMing articles articles are available in the site’s archives.

Awards

Gnome Stew won a silver GenCon EN World RPG Award (an “ENnie”) for Best Blog in 2011, and a silver ENnie for Best Blog in 2010. Running since 2001, the ENnie Awards are a celebration of excellence in tabletop roleplaying gaming, and are one of the RPG industry’s two most prestigious awards.

My work has also been nominated for two previous ENnies: Treasure Tables was nominated for Best Fan Site in 2007, and Bits of the Wilderness: Into the Open (to which I contributed) was nominated for Best Electronic Book in 2006.

Engine Publishing’s first product, Eureka, was nominated for a Golden Geek Award for Best Supplement in 2010. Eureka was nominated after just three months on the market, and alongside books from (among others) Wizards of the Coast, the largest publisher in the RPG industry.

Published Work — Engine Publishing

Engine Publishing’s second product, Masks, was developed by a team of 22 people on three continents over the course of 10 months and hundreds of hours of work. It’s larger and longer than our first book, and features nearly twice as much artwork. It took us 10 months to produce.

RPG industry veteran and game designer Sean Patrick Fannon said this about Masks: “These guys are onto something… something huge!”

Engine Publishing’s first product, Eureka, was an ambitious venture: Running 312 pages, released in both print and PDF, and created by a team of 19 people, it took us a year to produce.

Game designer and RPG industry veteran Wolfgang Baur said this about it in his Kobold Quarterly review: “Much more than a simple book of plots, Eureka! stands as one of those essential tools that GMs and game designers will find themselves reaching for again and again.”

Published Work — Freelance

Paizo Publishing

  • Dragon Magazine #345, “Excursion: Four Ways to Travel the World” | Author, 4,000 words (2006, print)

Goodman Games

Necromancer Games

Tabletop Adventures

93 Games Studio

Open Game Table

E.N. Publishing

  • E.N. Guilds: Messengers’ Guild | Author, 13,000 words (2006, PDF)
  • EN World Gamer #2, “Sold! A Little System for Selling Magic Items” | Author, 2,000 words (2005, print)

Alea Publishing Group

  • Poor Gamer’s Almanac #5, “Three Games of Chance” | Author, 2,000 words (2005, PDF)

Expeditious Retreat Press

Mad Kaiser Games

Other Credits

Over the years, I’ve also accumulated some oddball credits that don’t really fit the list above, including:

  • The Scroll #2, “Arcane Wizardry” (Sage Lore Productions) | Author, 1,400 words (1990, print) — This was my first published work, written when I was 13. The Scroll was a small-press gaming magazine that ran for a couple of years in the early ’90s.
  • 40 Years of GenCon (Atlas Games) | Contributing photographer, 3 photos (2007, print) — I love GenCon, and I was thrilled to have my photos published in this book. You can find them on pages 115, 145, and 156.
  • Adventure Burner (Burning Wheel) | NPC (2010, print) — I’ve played in Luke’s GenCon events for years, and sometime around 2008 he made me a character in one of his demo scenarios; I then wound up in the Adventure Burner as Marten Rayla, Wojt of Hochen.

Interviews

In connection with my blogging and publishing ventures, I’ve been interviewed in several places over the years: